


dead and gone and passed tonight

by writtenrevolution



Series: even when the music is gone [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Established Relationship, Explicit Language, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Canon, Self-Doubt, Sort Of, and by canon I mean my own story that hasn't been written yet, but its not Alexander or Thomas, end of the world AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23241982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writtenrevolution/pseuds/writtenrevolution
Summary: Alexander closes his eyes for a moment, remembers running through the woods - the fire behind him looming too close - and he remembers Thomas’s face in his mind. He remembers Thomas, getting back to Thomas, being the only thing that kept his feet moving against the ground beneath him.In which: it's the end of the world, and somehow, Thomas Jefferson becomes the only thing that motivates Alexander to keep himself alive.
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/Thomas Jefferson
Series: even when the music is gone [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1671070
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	dead and gone and passed tonight

**Author's Note:**

> so I'm currently working on a much larger "end of the world au" and I've been experimenting with a few ideas, and this is the result of my overthinking tonight. I'm hoping to get the actual story written (sometime) soon, but it'll be after I finish asahab. 
> 
> That being said, there is implied background character death in this fic, but that doesn't happen in the actual longer AU I'm working on. 
> 
> Title of this fic, as well as the series, comes from Safe & Sound by my darling Taylor Swift. 
> 
> (and, yes, I know that's not how fire works but it's my fic and I say fuck physics)

The brush is wild and untamed around him, and Alexander can feel every prick of the torns tearing into his arms as he forces himself to keep moving. His breath is coming out in sharp puffs, his thighs aching with each step, and the wound on his stomach an ever present sting. The path is alit in front of him, the fire surrounding him - enclosing in on him - offering much needed light. 

He has to keep going. He has to make sure it’s not too late. 

Alexander’s jacket gets snagged on a particularly sharp branch and he has to take a moment to untangle it, eyes reluctantly catching on the devastation behind him, before he can continue moving forward. He can’t stop and look back, can’t focus on the past or the hurt or the grief. To look back, to mourn, is to die. 

And he can’t afford that sacrifice right now. The past offers him nothing but pain and unbearable memories, and while the future is just as bleak, there is something churning deep in his stomach that he clings to. 

Hope. 

There isn’t a lot of it, he’s seen too much in the past three months to still believe that things will ever return to normal, but there’s enough hope threading its way through his veins to keep his feet moving. 

The flames around him lick at his skin, warming it and singeing the hair on his arms, and it’s the motivation he needs to keep moving. 

Alexander can see the top of the hill, far enough away that it has to be protected by the fire that threatens his every step, and it's so close. It’s so damn close that he can feel the protective arms wrapped around him, can see that war torn smile shot in his direction, can hear that angel sweet voice greeting him. 

Alexander promised him he’d be back, and they’ve both faced enough disappointment in this lifetime, Alex doesn’t intend to flake on this commitment. 

His feet feel like bricks as they splash into the deep creek that runs at the bottom of the hill. The water splashes up around him, sloshes of water covering the arms of his jacket, soaking into his shirt and making the jagged skin of his stomach sting. 

On the other side of the creek, he digs his fingers into the cold dirt, dragging his body along as he grasps and clings to the soil. It’s one foot after another, and he’s climbing and stumbling his way up the hill. It hadn’t seemed this step when he left earlier, but his body is taught and ragged with exhaustion. The adrenaline slowly fleeing his body as he manages to finally pull away from the too hot flames behind him. 

Even in the dark, the moon just a sliver in the sky above him, Alexander can make out the familiar shape of their supplies. It punches a wave of relief straight into his stomach, and he can barely keep his legs from giving out. Alex might be back, might have returned to camp, but he won’t be able to rest until he sees him. 

“Thomas?” He calls, his voice echoing through the air around him. 

And, in return, nothing but silence greets him. 

There is a familiar and foreboding twist in his chest. He had told Thomas to stay put, not to move an inch, and that he’d be back soon. And he was back, he made it back, but that doesn’t mean Thomas actually listened to him. 

Alexander sucks in a choked breath, “Thomas?” His voice is louder, desperation growing with each passing second. 

He has already lost everyone else, he can’t lose Thomas too. 

Even with their past, and his less than enthusiastic agreement to let the man join their survival team, Alexander has become so furiously dependent on him. He wants to laugh, wants to blame that sick bitch irony, but there isn’t a reason. 

Everyone is gone. Everyone but Thomas. 

The pain in his stomach throbs again, this time a sharp stab of hurt following immediately, and it knocks him to his knees. His hands are in the dirt again, fingers curling into the mud as he stares down at the grass below him. 

He can’t do this without Thomas. He can’t and he won’t. Without Thomas, without someone, what’s the point? He might as well walk back into the flames ragging down below them. 

“Alex?” The voice is distant, carried by wind or fear or some combination of the both. 

Alexander’s heart, which has been beating too fast in his own ears, silences. That raw and tugging feeling in his chest pulls hard, and he forces his head up. Hope is like a knife against his throat and he forces down his own expectations, his own wishes, because he’s been cut by the knife of it more than once before. 

But then he sees him, walking slowly towards Alexander, still wearing that stupid cashmere sweater from before - the one that Alex had scoffed at, because of course Thomas Jefferson would be the one to wear cashmere when the world was ending.

A relieved choke is forced from his lips, a sound he can barely even register making, as he forces himself off his knees - dirt still firmly clinging to the underneath of his fingernails. 

He throws himself at Thomas, hears the man’s huff of an inhale, and doesn’t bother to even register the throb that courses through his side. Because Thomas is here, he’s alive, and Alexander has to take a moment to appreciate that for all it’s worth. 

“Where the hell were you?” He says, voice harsh and cutting when he pulls back, even as he feels tears beginning to prick at his eyes, “I fucking told you to stay put.”

“I was worried about you. You said you’d be back two hours ago; I wasn’t just going to sit here on my ass while you burned to death.”

And it’s the exact opposite of what Alex wanted. If something happened to him - if something happens to him - he wants Thomas to keep going. He can’t bear the thought of Thomas giving up, like Alex had been so close to doing, and the thought leaves him with a feeling of unease in his stomach. 

“I thought I lost you.” Alexander says slowly, eyes following the slope of Thomas’s nose, cast into light by the fires licking at the base of the hill below them. 

Thomas’s hands enclose Alexander’s face, his palms pressing against Alex’s cheeks - which he knows are streaked with dirt and sweat - and the man forces eye contact. 

“Do you remember what I told you when Eliza…” He trails off, neither of them ready or willing to acknowledge what has happened yet, “Do you remember what I said that night?”

Alexander nods, the heat of Thomas’s hands a juxtaposition to the flames he had felt only minutes early, “Yes, but tell me again.”

Thomas’s eyes are dark, only a hint of the breathtaking brown visibile in the dark, and Alexander fixates on it, like it’s the only thing keeping him alive. 

“I’m not going anywhere, no matter what.” Thomas tells him, with a conviction that leaves no room to argue, even if they both know that whether he likes it or not, Thomas doesn’t have the ability to make a promise like that, “Everything is going to be okay.”

“How can you believe that?” Alexander asks, feels the way those tears pressing against the back of his eyes sting. A droplet falls down his cheeks and Thomas brushes it away with the pad of his thumb. 

“I have to. Even if you don’t believe in that, you have to believe in something, Alex. You have to believe in something that’ll get you up in the morning, something that will keep you fighting until the end.”

Alexander closes his eyes for a moment, remembers running through the woods - the fire behind him looming too close - and he remembers Thomas’s face in his mind. He remembers Thomas, getting back to Thomas, being the only thing that kept his feet moving against the ground beneath him. 

“I believe in you.”

“Then believe me when I tell you I’m not going anywhere.” Thomas says, his arms reaching out and pulling Alexander against his chest, “Now come sit down and let me make sure you’re okay.”

And the exhaustion filing into his bones leaves no room for him to try and argue. He stays quiet, allows Thomas to drag him to the edge of the hill - the point that sits high above the trees below them. They sit down on the cool grass but before Thomas can reach for him, Alexander’s eyes catch on the orange glow in the trees that surround the bottom of the hill - their hill. 

The flames are high, overbearing and spreading up through the leaves, leaving burnt nothingness behind them. Leaving nothing but destruction. 

Alex wonders if that will happen to everything he touches. 

He turns to look at Thomas, whose eyes are also downcast at the flames below them. Alex watches the reflection of the fire dance off Thomas’s dark eyes, remembers how Thomas is the only good thing left. The only good thing that hasn’t been destroyed by Alexander’s touch. 

He wonders how long it’ll take before that, like everything before it, changes too. 

“I love you.” Alexander says, the words falling from his lips for the first time, as easy as breathing. 

Thomas’s eyes find his own, and there is no surprise or shock or anything similar. Because even if Alexander’s never said it outloud, even if neither of them have, their actions have proved it a hundred times over. 

“I know,” Thomas says, his eyes soft, “I love you too.”

Alexander leans into him, and even though he is covered in dirt and grime, Thomas holds him close. 

“I should check that wound on your stomach.” Thomas tells him, his chest moving slow where Alex’s head rests against it. 

“In a minute,” Alexander replies, his voice quiet as he looks at the ground below them, “Just sit here with me for a minute.”

Thomas’s arm tightens around him just a fraction, and Alexander cannot drag his eyes away from the sprawling destruction below him. 

It’s only a matter of time, he thinks, only a matter of time before Thomas ends up like everyone else Alexander has ever loved. Destroyed and burned and dead on the ground. 

And then, just like before, Alexander will be alone. 

In the end, he is always alone. 

But for right now, Thomas is here, and that is enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> say hi on my Tumblr: writtenrevolution
> 
> (& tell me to finish my fucking WIPs)


End file.
